Lawyers and Rappers and Royalties — Oh My!
Lawsuits Over Song "Stealing" Aren't Going Away
The sanctity of the song (and the songwriter) has been a subject of considerable discussion recently — from the overheated online debate over Olivia Rodrigo’s retroactively sharing songwriting credit with Paramore for their influence on her hit “Good 4 U,” to Hipgnosis head Merck Mercuriadis sounding off about protecting songwriters in an open letter released on the same day the world biggest music company (and second-biggest music publisher) UMG went public for $55 billion.
Scrolling the Wikipedia page of “Songs Subject to Plagiarism Disputes” makes clear that fighting over soundalike songs is not a new phenomenon. But an increase in litigation is visible since the landmark 2013 case where the estate of Marvin Gaye took $5.3M off of Robyn Thicke and Pharrell Williams for “substantial similarities” between the former’s classic “Got To Give It Up” and the latter’s “Blurred Lines.” This high-profile case and subsequent trials held in court (and the court of public opinion) have put the very process of songwriting up for debate.
One of the more sensible voices in the conversation is Blake Robin (aka LUXXURY) whose TikToks on the topics of interpolation and other creative techniques have amassed 2.7M likes in recent months.
We spoke with Blake to get some answers that extend beyond TikTok’s 59-second limit.
You’ve been coming up a lot on TikTok for your takes on interpolation. How did that get started?
The very first TikTok I posted was called “How To Steal Music,” which was obviously a tongue-in-cheek clickbait way of saying that if you're inspired by a song, can you do something about it? Well, you can sample it, you can cover it, or you can interpolate it. And I happened to start with interpolation because sampling has already been pretty widely covered.
And suddenly in these past few months, because of the Olivia Rodrigo situation, interpolation has become much more a part of the vernacular.
Because of the trend of people on social media calling out similarities in songs.
That was almost definitely a factor in the situation between Paramore and Olivia Rodrigo. It was such a huge meme. You couldn't escape it for a few weeks, hearing the two songs together. But they were apparently in talks with the Paramore camp before the song came out. So who knows what happened there, specifically.
How did you get interested in all this?
My interest is the topic of inspiration. I came to LA as a songwriter with a publishing deal with Razor & Tie. So my first job in the music industry, so to speak, was to write songs. I was in the studio doing co-writes with a different person almost every day. I would work with Bonnie McKee, who the next day would go work with Katy Perry and write “Teenage Dream.”
How common is it that songs are somehow derived from other works?
I would say that probably eight times out of ten that a songwriter sits down to write, there’s either a pre-existing idea in your head or you're listening to something and vibing on it. The fact that you have been influenced by something, inspired by something, and you're going to pay homage to it, that's always been understood to be the case.
There's this wonderful book called Always Magic in the Air, that talks about Brill Building teams in the sixties like Gerry Goffin & Carole King and Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller. Writing songs was their day job. And there was a creative strategy they used called writing sideways. You would look at a hit and ask “What is it in this hit that we can borrow from?”
A classic example is Four Tops “It’s The Same Old Song” on Motown. They literally took “Sugar Pie, Honey,” and redid it. It was an inside joke, the same old song.
In the modern era, we'd be like, let's get some of this Weezer energy. What is Weezer energy? It's the combination of the chord changes and the melodic shape and, with Weezer in particular, a very specific dry-sounding guitar. So you kind of pick some of the elements that speak to you and then you consider what you can do that is new and different, but uses some of these elements.
Weezer is an interesting example because they so clearly did that with the Beach Boys with regards to their chord changes and their melodic structures. Plus the quiet/loud dynamic of the Pixies and Nirvana. Kurt Cobain also spoke many times talking about his love of the Pixies.
How much has that changed in the current environment?
After “Blurred Lines,” all these lawsuits got insane. You had to be careful what you said and what you did. I remember the conversation became, “Let's not tell anybody where this idea came from.”
So is this level of caution the new normal?
Well, we recently had the Katy Perry “Dark Horse” case and the Led Zeppelin case, both of which went in favor of the defendants. So everyone was sort of breathing out a little bit. Then with Olivia Rodrigo’s “Brutal,” you had Elvis Costello saying, “This is fine by me.” Then Lorde released “Solar Power,” and both Primal Scream and the George Michael estate said they’re “flattered” by the imitation.
Ultimately, it's a calculation. How likely are they to sue? How big are they? Do I know their lawyer? Do they share management? All of this stuff factors into it.
That seems like a lot to consider when you’re just trying to write a song.
I think that copyright law is garbage. And I say that as much as I make stuff that I wouldn't want to be stolen. There's part of me that's got a vested interest in protecting the creator. It just doesn't work that way in practice. It's really not protecting the creator as much as it's protecting Disney. And it's really just protecting IP that generally benefits the Marvin Gaye estate. Who's getting that money? I don't know these people, but you kind of picture the deadbeat cousins who were like, how can we squeeze a few more dollars out of cousin Marvin?
What is the solution?
I'll give a shoutout to a group that I'm a part of called Songwriters of North America that was started by Michelle Lewis and Kay Hanley. Songwriters need to band together to make sure that we are represented when there is a new settlement with radio, or whatever. There's always some sort of activity going on.
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1. Blackstone Officially Invests $1 Billion In Music Rights, Takes Ownership Stake In Hipgnosis
The 400-pound elephant in the room [yeah, we know] just got a lot bigger and hungrier for music IP.
Takeaway: “Hipgnosis Song Management has firmly established songs as an asset class,” said the longtime music industry manager Mercuriadis. “This new partnership with Blackstone will deliver financial strength to invest in proven songs as well as grow our song management team and bring additional sophistication to HSM, enabling us to create greater value to our stakeholders including our songwriters and shareholders in SONG.
2. Beggars Group Posts Heightened 2020 Operating Profit Despite Cutting New Releases by 20%
Another data point in the new release-versus-catalog debate.
Takeaway: One byproduct “of not being able to promote new releases to the extent we would have liked is that we have seen significantly reduced marketing and promotional expenditure across all labels.”
3. Coachella Festival Reverses Mandatory-Vaccination Policy
The unexpected announcement from the first major promoter to establish mandates is an optimistic omen, even as a new survey shows that “67% of U.S. fans are in favor of proof of vaccination or mask mandates at concerts.”
Takeaway: “After seeing first-hand the low transmission data and successful implementation of safety protocols at our other festivals this past month, we feel confident that we can update our health policy to allow for: Negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of the event OR proof of full vaccination.”
